Robert Horton, Writing About Film

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About This Site

The Crop Duster has two goals. One is to organize links to my critical work: reviews written for The Herald (Everett, Washington) and Seattle Weekly; and public appearances and TV jobs. Selected past work for Film Comment and elsewhere is also linkified. You may also link to my website of 1980s reviews and learn more about my book on Frankenstein and my graphic novel, ROTTEN.

The second goal is to keep a daily record of films watched, annotated with brisk, brief comments. It's a slightly more advanced version of the movie list I kept, in Flair pen, thumbtacked next to my bed when I was twelve.

Pages

The Lawless (Joseph Losey, 1950). New DVD of this well-managed social-issue picture is a very nice job. Racial tension in a small town where the immigrant fruit pickers live on the wrong side of the tracks – the kind of movie progressive Hollywood was cooking up at that moment. The unlikely couple at the center is Gail Russell and the always-electric Macdonald Carey (actually, a pretty good role for him). One manhunt across a field of clacking rocks is a good example of Losey’s ability to make a real location into something abstract.

At What a Feeling!, walk your dog over to a vintage review of Lawrence Kasdan’s The Accidental Tourist, the 1988 film that got Geena Davis an Oscar.